“Spinning Boris” is a (highly) fictionalised account of the adventures of three US political consultants who helped Boris Yeltsin win the impossible election of 1996. Starring Jeff Goldblum, Anthony la Paglia and Liev Schreiber, it’s a light but entertaining yarn of how they helped take the Russian president from single digits in the polls (at one stage he was polling 6%, behind Stalin) to beating the Communists.

One of the interesting claims made in the movie is that they were initally, unbeknownst to themselves, brought in by Yeltsin supporters who wanted to suspend democracy, by getting the Americans to prove that he could not win.

There’s also an interesting scene where Bill Clinton, who is up for reelection himself, and knows that if the Communists win in Russia he can kiss his reelection goodbye, basically allows Yeltsin to slate him at a joint press conference to look tough for Russian voters.